Our central question:

IMPACT STORIES

Every year, we discover natural leaders - students, entrepreneurs, and athletes. They dream to build their own future and we do our best to support them. There are some of our young leaders, symbols of hard work and perseverance:

Alphonse is a young and bright Togolese who participated in our activities in the village of Kpalimé from 2013-2014. Despite facing many obstacles, in particular the absence of a father, he never gave up. We recommended him to the African Leadership Academy (ALA), a school of excellence in South Africa. After two years at ALA, he was accepted by the University of Rochester in the United States where he is studying electrical and computer engineering.

Freddy is one of the most gifted young basketball players we’ve met in Togo. In 2014, we helped him to spend a week at the SEED (a basketball academy in Senegal). Then we sent him to a NBA camp in Burkina Faso. The NBA is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America, and is widely considered to be the premier men's professional basketball league in the world. A few months later, Freddy received a scholarship to pursue his dream at Liberty Christian School in the United States.

Mariette was orphaned by her mother and not recognized by her father. We met her in Lomé. She was captain of an under-18 (U18) Togolese national team that LYSD initiated in 2015 in partnership with the Togolese Basketball Federation. That same year, we provided her with a scholarship for her last year in high school, and she is currently studying English at the University of Lomé.

Flora is a 17-year-old Ivorian girl from Yopougon who left school in seventh grade because her mother was not able to pay her school fees. She discovered basketball in 2015, and the court became an escape and a way to make friends. She has been enrolled in the U18 national team and has found the courage to start taking French lessons. We gave her a scholarship, and she subsequently joined our pool of young educated.

Nono is in high school in Lomé. We offered her a scholarship this season. A member of our U18 selection, she became a young educator in our organization. We count on her leadership and strong values to spark interest among young girls.

Merveille, from the village of Kouvé, entered high school when she was just 13 years old. A natural leader, she does not hesitate to raise her voice to denounce discrimination, especially from the boys in her village. We offered her a scholarship this year, and we believe in her capacity to become a spokeswoman in her community.

We are honoured to witness these children and youth growing day after day, both on and off the court. 

New York City –  From now to January 30th, NYPH is accepting applications for the annual New York Passive House Conference & Expo, NYPH17. With three million square feet (and growing!) of Passive House projects in the pipeline, New York State is experiencing fast growth. This conference will showcase the very best and latest in passive house technology, construction and design – bringing you case studies, information sessions, components spotlights, networking opportunities, and much more.

One of the unique trademarks of the Annual New York Passive House Conference & Expo is its wide range of subject matter discussed, featuring experts and professionals in the field of policy, real estate, construction, architecture & design. The conference sessions will feature the latest Passive House developments, including:

• Urban, high density and high-rise buildings

• Low rise and rural approaches

• Multifamily housing

• Policymakers with expertise in implementing Passive House programs

• Integration of renewable energy

• Steel and concrete construction, wood frame construction and cross-laminated timber (CLT) construction

• The processes, details and results of passive house projects

Submit your abstract today by completing this form –  Presentation Submission.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is January 30th, 2017.

What a year.

2016 will be remembered. There is no doubt about that.

Some years come and go with little fanfare; containing a handful of celebrity deaths, the emergence of any number of new artists and the proliferation of the requisite number of political scandals that will top that year’s Wikipedia entry. But all in all, the totality of events contained within any loop around the sun tend to fall within a standard deviation. 2016, however, was anything but standard. 2016 will cast a shadow of uncertainty over 2017 as it begins. But true to its perplexing nature, 2016 will also carry over a legacy of significant progress, inspiration and a touch of urgency for a year many will be looking to characterize as the calendar switches over.

Uncertainty is one of those words mostly relegated to the private sector. Not in 2016. The volatility investors fear in commodities market came to the ballot box. Again and again. Say what you will about the election of Donald Trump election to the American presidency, but it was neither widely predicted nor the only political shift of the year. Brexit was supposed to be the big surprise of the year. Then you have the ousting of a Brazilian head of state, an impeachment in South Korea, an attempted coup in Turkey and the failed passage of a public referendum to bring peace to Colombia before a deal was finally struck. All that happened in the second half of 2016. This has created a global landscape that is the very definition of uncertainty, and with upcoming elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands highlighting the 2017 calendar, there is no guarantee things will become more certain this time a year from now.  

"Say what you will about the election of Donald Trump election to the American presidency, but it was neither widely predicted nor the only political shift of the year," writes Andrew Schenkel. The White House in Washington, D.C. Photo Credits: Daniel Pinto Lopes

But it’s not all valleys. There have been plenty of peaks.

Through all the uncertainty that dotted the 2016 timeline, there was a remarkable amount of progress when it comes to the fight to contain climate change. Momentum didn’t end when the Paris Climate Agreement was reached in the end of 2015; it continued. On Earth Day in April, 175 nations signed the Paris Agreement, which sparked a marathon of domestic actions around the globe that lead to ratification after ratification in capitals from Belize to Zimbabwe. By October, enough countries ratified the agreement to bring it across legal thresholds and by the COP 22 meetings in Morocco, the Paris Agreement officially went into force. This is lightning speed for diplomacy, but that pace was matched when it came to renewable energy. Across the word, city and city kept announcing plans to go 100 percent renewable. During the third quarter of 2016, in the United States alone, 4,141 MW of solar energy was installed. That’s a 191% increase over the same quarter just one year ago. Around the world the Renewables now supply almost a quarter of electricity worldwide.

COP22 opening ceremony in Marrakech, Morocco. Photo Credits: Max Thabiso Edkins

In addition to the legitimate progress made in the transition away from fossil fuels, there are plenty of sources for inspiration within 2016. Years from now, the victory at Standing Rock will likely be remembered as a flashpoint for activism, with victory secured under the hardest conditions during very difficult times. With the people of the United States still in recovery mode after a divisive presidential election, “water protectors” from around the country joined forces with the people of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota. After weeks of protests, frigid temperatures and combative conditions, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered a withdrawal of the pipeline project and now an alternative route must be found.

Connect4Climate received inspiring climate change solutions stories from young people around the world that raised their voices through the Film4Climate Global Video Competition. Photo Credits: Max Thabiso Edkins

Of course inspiration comes in many forms, and the sheer diversity of voices and faces calling for climate action is a theme that wove its way through a bumpy 2016. This was seen at Standing Rock where native peoples, war veterans and families from across America joined forces. It was also seen in numerous other climate initiatives throughout the year. We saw this in the Film4Climate global video contest. By the time the deadline came, more than 860 videos from 155 countries were submitted and the winners were truly globally representative. Awards went to filmmakers in the United States, France, Spain, Finland, Kiribati, Australia, India, Brazil, Greece, Morocco, and Laos. When the winners for the Film4Climate contest were announced in Morocco this November, there was no shortage of inspiration. Then after the first place film “Three Seconds” was shown, there was literally nothing but inspiration in the room. All of this inspiration will be needed for 2017.

And to add some fuel to the inspirational fire….a touch of urgency.

Urgency is a natural byproduct for a year like 2016. It’s not just because of the mashup of political uncertainty, diplomatic progress and flickers of inspiration, but it is due to some stark realities that show climate impacts are a now problem not a future problem. 2016 ended with the city of Beijing recording its longest string of red alert air pollution days in a row. The five-day red alert came out on the heels of reports that 2016 would at least be tied for being the warmest year on record (with 2015) and is likely to be the warmest year in history. In November, Arctic ice levels hit a record low, and we are now in “uncharted territory”, according to researchers. Equally depressing are reports of accelerated impacts to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef showing it suffered its worst bleaching ever in 2016 thanks to warmer oceans. And then there is the yearly wrap up of newly extinct species. In October, a major analysis found the number of wild creatures was on track to fall by two-thirds by 2020, compared to 1970.

A hazy day in Beijing, China. Photo Credits: Wu Zhiyi / World Bank

This is the true urgency of the the cause. Not the scorecard of national contributions nor the failure to reach certain benchmarks. Those are marks on a chart. The real indicators are in what we are losing; what we will no longer be able to see. That is where urgency comes from, and above all that is the most constructive thing to take away from an otherwise uncertain year. There’s still plenty to save and plenty to see.

Here’s to harnessing the urgency.

Banner and Thumbnail Images Photo Credits: Becker1999

In 2013, an estimated one million Filipinos were plunged into poverty after Typhoon Haiyan sapped $12.9 billion from the national economy and destroyed over a million homes.

No sooner had the 2010 Cyclone Aila devastated coastal areas of Bangladesh than unemployment and poverty levels surged 49 percent and 22 percent, respectively.

Economic strains facing Guatemala after Hurricane Stan in 2005 forced 7.3 percent of affected families to send children to work instead of school. 

Whenever disaster strikes, it leaves more than just a trail of devastation—it also leaves communities further in the grip of poverty.

And yet, when we hear of natural disasters today, their financial cost—that is, the damage inflicted on buildings, infrastructure, and agricultural production—is what catches the headlines. New research, however, suggests that reducing natural disasters to their monetary impact does not paint the whole picture. In fact, it distorts it.

That’s because a simple price tag represents only the losses suffered by people wealthy enough to have something to lose in the first place. It fails to account for the crushing impact of disasters on the world’s poor, who suffer much more in relative terms than wealthier people.

Through this lens, a new report released by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), warns that natural disasters are a greater impediment to ending global poverty than previously understood. Launched this week at COP22, the report, Unbreakable: Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters underscores the urgency for climate-smart policies that better protect the world’s most vulnerable. 

  Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President

Compared to their wealthier counterparts, poor people are more likely to live in fragile housing in disaster-prone areas, and work in sectors dangerously susceptible to extreme weather events, like farming and agriculture. They also receive much less government and community support for recovery. The result: the impact of a storm, flood, drought or earthquake is more than twice as significant for poor people than anyone else.

For example, when unprecedented floods affected Mumbai in 2005, poor people lost 60 percent more than their richer neighbors—and when poor people lose the little they have, there are immediate and sometimes irreversible consequences for their health. In Ecuador, poor children exposed in utero to El Niño flooding in 1997-1998 were found to have relatively lower birthweights, shorter statures, and impaired cognitive abilities.

Proposing a new measure for assessing disaster-related damages—one that factors in the unequal burden on the poor—Unbreakable shows that natural disasters currently cost the global economy $520 billion (60 percent more than is usually reported) and force some 26 million people into poverty every year.

But there is hope. Governments can prevent millions of people from falling into extreme poverty by enacting measures that better protect the poor from natural disasters.

The report proposes a “resilience policy” package that would help poor people cope with the consequences of adverse weather and other extreme natural events. This includes early warning systems, improved access to personal banking, insurance policies, and social protection systems (like cash transfers and public works programs) that could help people better respond to and recover from shocks. Unbreakable also calls on governments to make critical investments in infrastructure, dikes, and other means of controlling water levels, and develop appropriate land-use policies and building regulations. These efforts must be specifically targeted to protect the poorest and most vulnerable citizens, not just those with higher-value assets.

The report assesses the expected benefits from these policies in 117 countries. If Angola, for example, were to introduce scalable safety nets to cover its poorest citizens, the government would see gains equaling $160 million a year. Globally, these measures combined would help countries and communities save $100 billion a year and reduce the overall impact of disasters on well-being by 20 percent.

“Countries are enduring a growing number of unexpected shocks as a result of climate change,” said Stephane Hallegatte, a GFDRR lead economist and lead author of the report. “Poor people need social and financial protection from disasters that cannot be avoided. With risk policies in place that we know to be effective, we have the opportunity to prevent millions of people from falling into poverty.”

Efforts to build poor people’s resilience are already gaining ground, the report shows. Only last month, thanks to an innovative insurance program, Haiti, Barbados, Saint Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines received a payout of $29 million in support of recovery efforts after suffering the effects of Hurricane Matthew.

Unbreakable is a roadmap to help countries better adapt to climate change, and boost the resilience and prosperity of their most vulnerable citizens. By equipping the most vulnerable with the means to cope, rebuild and rebound we can increase the chance for millions to stay out of extreme poverty. 

The COP22 Young and Future Generations Day launched at the United Nations (UN) Youth Booth located in the Blue Zone in the presence of the Ahmad Alhendawi, UN Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth; Max Edkins, Climate Change Expert, Connect4Climate; Adriana Valenzuela, focal point for Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) with the UNFCCC; and myself Ntiokam Divine, UN Global Youth Digital Advocate for Post-2015 and UN MY World 2030 Global Survey, Global Coordinator for Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network (CSAYN).

The launch was one of the most engaging youth-orientated side-event at in the Blue Zone of the Climate Conference, COP22. The Youth Booth exhibition gathered hundreds of young people, women and men across the global south and global north during which one of the key activities was to share with the audience how Connect4Climate and other youth organizations influence the climate talks.

Max Edkins, Connect4Climate, speaks to youth audience with Ahmad Ahlendawi, UN Youth Envoy, at COP22. Photo Credit: Giulia Braga

Max Edkins gave an overview of the vision and mission of the Connect4Climate Program, as well as its impacts in the Climate negotiations. He underscored the fact that the Youth4Climate initiative reached out to young people all over the world, that more than 860 youth voices were represented through the Film4Climate competition at COP22, from 155 countries, signifying the global youth call for climate action. The Connect4Climate program aims to inspire action, advance climate solutions and highlight the opportunity in tackling climate change. “We are in an exciting time, the world is on a path to a low-carbon resilient future, and it is being led by young people,” Max Edkins said.

After this Ahmad Alhendawi highlighted the importance of directing resources towards including young people in the sustainable development agenda and the climate action agenda. He shared his experience from Jordan and reiterated the fact he is at the UN to ensure young people are fully engaged in all UN processes towards achieving the Agenda 2030 for the Sustainable Development. In addition to this, he reaffirmed his commitment in advocating for youth meaningful participation in all High-Level Dialogues for a better and inclusive sustainable growth. 

Max Edkins, Connect4Climate, launches Young and Future Generations Day, with UN Youth Envoy, UNFCCC, and YOUNG representatives. Photo Credit: Giulia Braga

We had participants from Africa (Togo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia, Morocco), and a good number from the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia.

Connect4Climate provides T-shirts to youth leaders at COP22. Photo Credit: Max Thabiso Edkins

Mark Terry, one of the facilitators from York University from Toronto, Canada, also addressed the delegates emphasizing the importance of youth in solving climate change and how the delegates could get involved. Adriana Valenzuela presented the Youth winners for the 2016 video contest and introduced YOUNGO members to giver their personal take on how young people can be more involved.

In closing the inspirational Youth Day launch, Max Edkins, Ahmad Alhendawi and other speakers handed out T-shirts that read “We are Accelerating Climate Action,” underscoring the youth engagement to advance global climate action and implement the Paris Agreement.

Max Edkins, Connect4Climate, with others launch Young and Future Generation Day, COP22. Photo Credit: Giulia Braga

After all the great presentations, some delegates were interested to know how they could join the Youth4Climate movement. Max Edkins highlighted that visiting the Connect4Climate website shall be a good start and should there be more questions, Max and the team could be reached directly after sharing his details to some delegates.

Young and Future Generations Day, COP22. Photo Credit: Max Thabiso Edkins

In support and committing to the new development agenda, all delegates pledged that supporting the Youth4Climate call to action is one of the ways to advocate for a sustainable environment to address SDG13- Climate Action. At the Youth Booth, CSAYN and its partners also exhibited the global goals translated in local languages to ensure that No One is Left Behind by engaging everyone at national, regional and global levels calling up to SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities.

As we enter 2017 we look forward to continued youth engagement in tackling climate change, developing and implementing climate solutions and demanding increased climate action. I continue the chant we led at COP22: “Youth for Climate! Youth for Climate! Youth for Climate!”